Short answer
- the code that you are using doesn't allow you to do that for security reasons
- alternative code below
Long answer
I was curious about your problem and then I started to try to code
After a while I realized that if you run this snippet you will see that it correctly works:
#!/usr/bin/env python
from Crypto.PublicKey import RSA
from Crypto.Cipher import PKCS1_OAEP
import base64
def generate_keys():
modulus_length = 1024
key = RSA.generate(modulus_length)
#print (key.exportKey())
pub_key = key.publickey()
#print (pub_key.exportKey())
return key, pub_key
def encrypt_private_key(a_message, private_key):
encryptor = PKCS1_OAEP.new(private_key)
encrypted_msg = encryptor.encrypt(a_message)
print(encrypted_msg)
encoded_encrypted_msg = base64.b64encode(encrypted_msg)
print(encoded_encrypted_msg)
return encoded_encrypted_msg
def decrypt_public_key(encoded_encrypted_msg, public_key):
encryptor = PKCS1_OAEP.new(public_key)
decoded_encrypted_msg = base64.b64decode(encoded_encrypted_msg)
print(decoded_encrypted_msg)
decoded_decrypted_msg = encryptor.decrypt(decoded_encrypted_msg)
print(decoded_decrypted_msg)
#return decoded_decrypted_msg
def main():
private, public = generate_keys()
print (private)
message = b'Hello world'
encoded = encrypt_private_key(message, public)
decrypt_public_key(encoded, private)
if __name__== "__main__":
main()
but if you now change two of the final lines [i.e. the role of the keys] into:
encoded = encrypt_private_key(message, private)
decrypt_public_key(encoded, public)
and rerun the program you will get the TypeError: No private key
Let me quote from this great answer:
"As it turns out, PyCrypto is only trying to prevent you from mistaking one for the other here, OpenSSL or Ruby OpenSSL allow you for example to do both: public_encrypt/public_decrypt and private_encrypt/private_decrypt
[...]
Additional things need to be taken care of to make the result usable in practice. And that's why there is a dedicated signature package in PyCrypto - this effectively does what you described, but also additionally takes care of the things I mentioned"
Adapting this link I came to the following code that should solve your question:
# RSA helper class for pycrypto
# Copyright (c) Dennis Lee
# Date 21 Mar 2017
# Description:
# Python helper class to perform RSA encryption, decryption,
# signing, verifying signatures & keys generation
# Dependencies Packages:
# pycrypto
# Documentation:
# https://www.dlitz.net/software/pycrypto/api/2.6/
from Crypto.PublicKey import RSA
from Crypto.Cipher import PKCS1_OAEP
from Crypto.Signature import PKCS1_v1_5
from Crypto.Hash import SHA512, SHA384, SHA256, SHA, MD5
from Crypto import Random
from base64 import b64encode, b64decode
import rsa
hash = "SHA-256"
def newkeys(keysize):
random_generator = Random.new().read
key = RSA.generate(keysize, random_generator)
private, public = key, key.publickey()
return public, private
def importKey(externKey):
return RSA.importKey(externKey)
def getpublickey(priv_key):
return priv_key.publickey()
def encrypt(message, pub_key):
#RSA encryption protocol according to PKCS#1 OAEP
cipher = PKCS1_OAEP.new(pub_key)
return cipher.encrypt(message)
def decrypt(ciphertext, priv_key):
#RSA encryption protocol according to PKCS#1 OAEP
cipher = PKCS1_OAEP.new(priv_key)
return cipher.decrypt(ciphertext)
def sign(message, priv_key, hashAlg="SHA-256"):
global hash
hash = hashAlg
signer = PKCS1_v1_5.new(priv_key)
if (hash == "SHA-512"):
digest = SHA512.new()
elif (hash == "SHA-384"):
digest = SHA384.new()
elif (hash == "SHA-256"):
digest = SHA256.new()
elif (hash == "SHA-1"):
digest = SHA.new()
else:
digest = MD5.new()
digest.update(message)
return signer.sign(digest)
def verify(message, signature, pub_key):
signer = PKCS1_v1_5.new(pub_key)
if (hash == "SHA-512"):
digest = SHA512.new()
elif (hash == "SHA-384"):
digest = SHA384.new()
elif (hash == "SHA-256"):
digest = SHA256.new()
elif (hash == "SHA-1"):
digest = SHA.new()
else:
digest = MD5.new()
digest.update(message)
return signer.verify(digest, signature)
def main():
msg1 = b"Hello Tony, I am Jarvis!"
msg2 = b"Hello Toni, I am Jarvis!"
keysize = 2048
(public, private) = rsa.newkeys(keysize)
# https://docs.python.org/3/library/base64.html
# encodes the bytes-like object s
# returns bytes
encrypted = b64encode(rsa.encrypt(msg1, private))
# decodes the Base64 encoded bytes-like object or ASCII string s
# returns the decoded bytes
decrypted = rsa.decrypt(b64decode(encrypted), private)
signature = b64encode(rsa.sign(msg1, private, "SHA-512"))
verify = rsa.verify(msg1, b64decode(signature), public)
#print(private.exportKey('PEM'))
#print(public.exportKey('PEM'))
print("Encrypted: " + encrypted.decode('ascii'))
print("Decrypted: '%s'" % (decrypted))
print("Signature: " + signature.decode('ascii'))
print("Verify: %s" % verify)
rsa.verify(msg2, b64decode(signature), public)
if __name__== "__main__":
main()
Final notes:
- the last
prints have ascii because as stated here "In case of base64 however, all characters are valid ASCII characters"
- in this case we are using the same key - the private one - both for encrypting and decrypting, so yes: we would end up to be symmetric but...
- but - as stated here - "The public key is PUBLIC - it's something you would readily share and thus would be easily disseminated. There's no added value in that case compared to using a symmetric cipher and a shared key" plus "Conceptually, "encrypting" with the private key is more useful for signing a message whereas the "decryption" using the public key is used for verifying the message"
- the same identical last principle is expressed in this answer - "Typically [...] we say sign with the private key and verify with the public key"
